1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to controlling the stepping motion of a robot.
2. Description of Background Art
Appropriate foot placement is important when attempting to come to a stop during dynamic three dimensional bipedal walking. Simple models can be used to determine where to step in order to stop, but the errors resulting from the assumptions of these models may be significant, especially in bipeds with a large number of degrees of freedom, distributed mass, and complex walking control systems. More complex models can reduce the errors resulting from these assumptions, but even with accurate models, small errors in modeling parameters may lead to significant errors in predicting the desired stepping location.
Humans are very adept at stepping in just the right place after being pushed in order to regain balance. From simple observations of toddlers it is clear that this ability improves with practice and that learning likely plays a large role in a person's ability to choose an appropriate place to step. This ability becomes almost reflexive for humans. Since humans are generally adept at stepping to an appropriate place to recover from pushes, it is reasonable to expect that humanoid robots can more effectively operate in real world environments and perform tasks that humans perform if the robots are similarly adept at recovering from pushes.